“I know,” said Rhonda, and in a melancholy tone she added, “Mr. Benedict would have found that amusing, don’t you think? No doubt he’d have laughed himself to sleep.”
“What is it?” Constance asked.
“An early birthday present,” Rhonda said.
Everyone immediately understood. After the children’s mission last year, Mr. Benedict had baked a cake for Constance’s birthday even though it was a month early. He’d known too well that they would all be separated soon enough. It was at that unexpected celebration that the other children had learned Constance was only two years old. Until then they’d thought she was just an unusually small, awkward, and stubborn child with poor manners.
“So it’s a sort of commemoration,” Sticky said. “To remind us of last year.”
The first thing Constance pulled from the box was a card that read: Happy birthday, my dear! Always remember that the world is your oyster. Affectionately, Mr. Benedict.
Constance seemed ready to cry, but she cleared her throat and passed the card roughly to Reynie. She needed several tries to take out her present — it was small and delicate, and Constance had neither patience nor dexterity — but at last she produced a lovely pendant on a slender gold chain. The pendant was a miniature globe, painted in deep greens and blues, with a bright, tiny crystal set into it.
“Oh, it’s beautiful, dear!” said Mrs. Washington.
“It’s all right,” Constance said, but now she really was crying and in no mood to be watched. “I’m going to my room now.” Clutching the pendant tightly in her pudgy fingers, she hastened from the room.
“We should go be with her,” Reynie said.
The adults murmured their approval as Sticky and Kate nodded and rose from the table. Before he left the room, Reynie stopped in the doorway to take one last glance at Miss Perumal, who happened to be looking right back at him. Her forehead was wrinkled with concern — she was worried about him, of course — and Reynie did his best to give her a reassuring look before he closed the door, wondering when he would see her again.
He could have used a reassuring look himself.
Constance Contraire sat among the heaps of linens on her bed, wearing her new pendant and a sullen expression. When her friends came in, she muttered something cranky and looked away. Not even Reynie, an excellent judge of people’s moods, could tell exactly how upset Constance was, for with Constance crankiness was routine.
It wasn’t entirely her fault. Though older, wiser, and slightly bigger than she had been a year ago, Constance knew perfectly well that her obstinacy — her sheer, unrivaled determination not to do what she was told — had played a key role in the success of their mission. She knew, of course, that her friends also had played important roles, and that her willfulness was not generally a likable trait — in fact, it sometimes ran counter to her own desires. But she’d received a great deal of positive attention for her defiant behavior, and she was, after all, only three years old. She might be a budding genius, but her emotions were still as complicated and ungovernable as those of any child her age. So while on the one hand Constance wanted to be pleasant, courteous, and helpful, on the other she was inclined to be argumentative and grumpy, and indeed this was the sort of behavior that came most naturally to her.
Her friends were used to this. To a certain degree they all faced the same difficulty — that conflict between heart and brain that arose from being gifted beyond their years — and in sensitive moments such as this one, they felt keenly what it meant to be children in a world of grown-ups. Without a word, the three of them climbed onto the bed and sat with Constance. It might not have been her style to say so, but Constance loved Mr. Benedict more than anyone in the world, and they all knew it.
They sat a while in silence. It wasn’t long, however, until Constance made a whining sound and climbed down from her bed. She could never stand to be the object of others’ pity unless she had purposely aimed for that effect, and this time she hadn’t. Moreover, her irritation crowded out her self-pity, which came as a relief. So it was in a slightly stur-dier mood that she uncovered the journal Mr. Benedict had left them (she’d hidden it under a pile of clothes) and stared at it intently, as if hoping it would reveal its secret of its own accord.
“Somehow it seems like I should know what that shortcut is,” Constance said. “I have a nagging feeling about it, like it should be familiar. But I can’t place it.”
“I’ve had the same feeling,” Reynie said.
“Hey, so have I!” said Kate. “What about you, Sticky?”
Sticky shrugged. “I’m always having nagging feelings. The trouble is knowing which one to pay attention to.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Kate said. “If Mr. Benedict had mentioned some kind of shortcut before, you boys would remember the conversation. I think even I would remember it. So why does this mention of a shortcut seem so familiar to all of us?”
“We must all have heard about it somewhere,” Reynie said, “or else . . . Do you suppose it could have been in the newspaper?”
“Hey, that would make sense!” said Kate. “Mr. Benedict knows we all read the newspaper every day.”
Reynie rubbed his chin. “So the question is what —”
But Sticky, having already consulted his memory, interrupted him excitedly. “It’s that cargo ship — the MV Shortcut! Remember? It was in all the papers yesterday.”
“Remind us,” said Constance.
“Here, I’ll quote one of the articles I read,” said Sticky, and in a rather self-important tone he recited: “‘Tomorrow the speediest cargo ship in history will make its maiden voyage, launching from Stonetown Harbor at four o’clock — ’”
“Four o’clock!” Kate cried. “We have to get down there!”
“We still have a few hours,” said Sticky, who felt hurt at having been so quickly interrupted, to say nothing of how nervous he felt at the thought of leaving.
“It will take a while to reach the docks, though,” Reynie said. “And first we have to sneak out of the house.”
“That part’s easy enough,” said Kate, pulling out her rope. “There’s a hidden laundry chute down the hall that empties behind the maze.”
“How do you know that?” Sticky asked. “I mean, if it’s hidden —”
“Found it on our last visit. When you were looking at bookshelves, I was exploring. The chute hasn’t been sealed off or anything, has it, Constance?”
“How should I know? I didn’t even know about it,” said Constance. She gestured at the laundry piles around them. “Normally this just builds up until Number Two hauls it away in a basket. She says she hates to spoil me, but she can’t stand the mess. I call it her laundry quandary.”
“That must annoy her to no end,” Sticky said.
“Oh, it does!” said Constance, and she smiled a little, cheered by the memory.
Kate was taken aback. “You mean you live in this house and don’t even —?” She shook her head. “You amaze me, Constance. Anyway, I can lower you all down the chute with my rope, and then I’ll come down after you.”
“The police have gone,” said Reynie, peering out the window into the courtyard, “but Mr. Bane’s still guarding the gate. I’ll bet he has orders not to let anyone come or go without permission.”
“Now that’s a problem,” said Kate. “If he tries to stop us it’ll draw attention to what we’re doing.”
“I’ll think of something,” said Reynie. “Meanwhile, could you sneak down and get different shirts for Sticky and me? Mine’s giving me a rash.”
Kate balked at this. “I doubt any shirts in this house would fit you. Don’t you think you should just —?”
“My dad brought in the suitcases,” Sticky said. He gave her a suspicious look. “Didn’t you see them by the stairs? We walked right past them.”